Revolutionary Ride

by Lois Pryce

  ‘Ah, so you will be returning to work soon. The summer holidays are finished, yes?’ asked the son. Caught out! I made some rambling explanation about how I was allowed special leave for this journey.

  ‘Are you married?’

  The questions kept coming, but at least to this one I could give the right answer truthfully. They looked pleased.

  ‘And do you have children?’

  Their expressions turned to sympathetic disappointment when I answered truthfully on this count.

  ‘But you will have children when you get home?’ they said hopefully.

  I heard myself agreeing to start breeding the minute my feet touched British soil. I had now concocted an entirely false identity but at least they were happy.

  ‘We will pray for you to have good children,’ said the son with another radiant smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said weakly.

  He set about dismantling the Tupperware barricade and I settled back into my bunk to read while trying to maintain the demeanour of a broody school secretary. The chick left the carriage to wash the plates and cutlery and returned a while later, excitable and animated.

  ‘There are many of us on this train!’ he exclaimed, ‘Many Bahá’ís, all travelling home from visiting family in Turkey.’

  He was so happy to be amongst his people and had obviously designated our carriage as Bahá’í party central. For the rest of the evening his comrades were popping in and out, men, women, old and young, all dropping by for a snack and chat and to meet the woman from England with the motorcycle. They questioned me, invited me to stay with them in Iran, giggled and made jokes among themselves, which were half translated to me and seemed to be largely at the expense of the Iranian mullahs. We had occasional visits from a teenage student computer programmer who dressed like Ali G but spoke better English, and was therefore commandeered to translate long-winded religious reveries about the sun and moon reflecting God, which he did with exceptionally good grace and patience.

  Despite our differences I felt entirely at ease with these people. They exuded a comfortable, human warmth and kindness that I could not claim to have experienced very often amongst complete strangers. I felt safe and welcome in their company but wondered if this was a Bahá’í phenomenon. Would I have the same experience with all Iranians? I would find out soon enough; in twenty-four hours we would transfer on to the Iranian train and I would enter the Islamic Republic.

  At Lake Van, in the mountainous wilderness of eastern Turkey, the baggage car was uncoupled from the train, trundled on to a ferry with a section of railway tracks embedded in its hold, and I and the other few hundred passengers climbed aboard the ferry for a five-hour sailing across the lake. On the eastern shore the baggage car would be hauled out of the ferry and hooked up to an Iranian train, which we would all board and continue on our way. It seemed a strangely convoluted way of getting to the other side of a lake. Why didn’t they just continue the tracks around its edge? True, the surrounding country was rugged and rocky, but the railway had been built as recently as the 1970s with British and American funding, so I assumed they’d had the skills and finances to lay a few miles of track on some rough ground. I couldn’t understand it, but when I asked people the reason, nobody knew. They shrugged their shoulders, laughed and seemed unconcerned. I wondered, not for the first time when finding myself confronted with foreign illogicality, if my obsession with efficiency was a character trait peculiar to northern Europe. I decided I needed to lighten up – what the heck if they want to waste loads of time and effort hauling trains on to boats? It made for an interesting diversion and meant I got to hang out with more of my Iranian travelling companions, most of whom seemed to be entertaining themselves by taking photos of each other shinning up a giant flagpole on the deck and clambering up and down rickety ladders. I watched them swinging off the top, whooping and laughing with apparently no concern for their safety; it was exhilarating to see and particularly refreshing that nobody tried to stop them fooling around. I stood on the deck, alone in the darkening evening, cheered by the clowning going on all around me. It made me feel at home; this was the kind of thing my friends and I would get up to. But I was surprised. My image of Iran was not that of a nation out for a laugh and a good time; I had expected Iranians to take a more solemn approach to life. My preconceptions were already unravelling fast.

  Below decks, a fetid miasma of diesel and chemical toilets lingered and inside the cabin the woodwork was scuffed and the upholstery tatty, a stark contrast to the trim orderliness of the Turkish train. I guessed the boat belonged to the Iranian side of the Trans-Asia Express, as all the signs were now in Persian with a few attempts at English translations – ‘In case of death do not lean on balustrades.’ I found my Bahá’í carriage companions and attempted to buy them dinner and tea from the food counter, but they were having none of it, and insisted, once again, that the tea towels and Tupperware were deployed for another feast.

  ‘You must eat with us,’ said the son with his kind smile, ‘you are like a sister now.’

  On the eastern side of the lake the Iranian train was nowhere to be seen but nobody grumbled. In fact, it barely warranted a mention. So we all squeezed into a waiting room, furnished with nothing but a few plastic chairs, and did what the room was designed for.

  Eventually, an Iranian railway official, dressed casually in an open-necked shirt, began herding us into some sort of line in order to allocate us carriages and seats. Next to me in the melee that passed for a queue was an elderly Iranian woman, dressed in the head-to-toe black chador, tightly wrapped around her neck and hairline with only the oval of her face visible, wrinkled and weathered from decades of Middle Eastern sun. She kept staring at me, her features large and expressive, although I was having trouble working out exactly what it was she was trying to express. Many of the other women were dressed in western outfits and some had their hair exposed as we were still officially on Turkish soil, but this woman’s clothing suggested a devout Islamic faith and all the traditional values that accompany it. I felt nervous under her gaze, sensing her criticism. This was the Iran I had feared, disapproval from a nation of hardline Islamists, angered by the nerve of my infidel jaunt around their country. I shifted awkwardly, reluctant to lose my place in the ‘queue’ but fearing the situation that I sensed was brewing.

  She came at me with a jabbing knotty finger. ‘You, you have motor, yes?’

  I must have appeared confused because she repeated it again but this time she accompanied it with the universal motion for twisting the throttle, complete with engine revving noises.

  ‘Vroom, vroom! You have motor, yes? It is you?’

  There was no point in denying it. Almost everyone in this room had seen my bike being loaded on to the train in Ankara, and anyone who had missed the spectacle had heard about it by now, via the Trans-Asia telegraph. There is no anonymity for the lone female British motorcyclist in Iran. I had a sudden cold fear that she was a spy for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Had she got wind of my bike-smuggling plan? Maybe my visa lady back home had been wrong and I was on some kind of ‘no vehicle’ list. I got a grip of my fevered imagination and ’fessed up.

  ‘Er, yes, that’s me, I have motor, yes.’

  I awaited a steely grip on my wrist but instead she grabbed hold of my face with her big fleshy hands. Then she landed an enthusiastic smack on my cheek as a huge smile erupted across her stern features.

  ‘Very good! Very good!’ she bellowed at eardrum-piercing volume, hugging me into the voluminous folds of her chador.

  Now she was jumping up and down, whacking me on the back and squeezing my face again, hooting with laughter. ‘Very good! Very good! Vroom, vroom!’

  Her motorcycle actions became more animated until she was imitating the moves of a daredevil speedway racer, body swerving from side to side, hips swinging beneath yards of billowing black fabric. She spoke excitedly in Persian to her friend, who translated for her.

  ‘She
says she wishes you every blessing for your journey.’

  The old lady took my face in her hands again and stared into my eyes with such feeling I was almost compelled to look away. She said something I couldn’t understand and then smiled, repeating it, gripping my face even harder.

  I looked to her friend for a translation. She nodded and smiled too.

  ‘It is a saying we have in Iran,’ she said. ‘It means, “Go and wake up your luck.”’

  As a lone female foreigner, I was singled out for special treatment and found myself adopted by various groups of women, all of whom insisted I share a cabin with them. I was spoilt for choice for sleeping companions but ended up in the company of Arshia, an English-speaking Indian woman who deserted her Iranian husband and family to take care of me. The easy hospitality I had experienced with my Bahá’í companions seemed to extend to the entire population of this train. People would regularly check on me, give me a reassuring pat on the arm or just offer a friendly wave across the room, and it wasn’t only the women. Any dealings I had with the male passengers were equally amenable and always accompanied by warm smiles and a respectful politeness. Everyone wanted to help me, to talk to me and, of course, feed me.

  The Iranian train arrived three hours late, causing a surge of activity as the previously patient passengers bundled towards it in a flurry of black cloaks, patterned headscarves and a monumental amount of baggage, heaving and hefting vast holdalls and the ubiquitous bulging Chinese laundry bags up the steps while the ancient locomotive huffed and hissed with an un-Iranian impatience. Over the course of the night we creaked our way to the border, sleep eluding us as a bewildering amount of Turkish exit formalities dragged us from our beds on a regular basis. When dawn broke, we were summoned once more, bleary-eyed, on to the platform at the small border town of Razi, everyone hauling their vast amounts of luggage this time. It was a new day but something else had changed – every woman was now wearing a headscarf. This was the Iranian entry formalities and customs inspection. I felt a twinge of nervous excitement as I looked around me, watching the sun rise over the rugged mountains in the distance. I pulled my headscarf over my hair for the first time. This is it, I thought. I’m in Iran.

  The first sight that confronted me on the ground was a life-size vinyl banner bearing an illustration of a woman wearing a head-to-toe chador. The accompanying text was in Persian and Turkish but I guessed what it said, and Arshia confirmed my deduction – under Iranian law all women must abide by the Islamic dress code, only hands and face can be uncovered. It was a peculiar moment, staring at that sign. Back home it had seemed like a dressing-up game, wrapping a scarf round my head in Snappy Snaps for my visa photo. Now the reality stared back at me; well, not quite – the artistic impression had replaced the woman’s face with a blank white space, which only added to my discomfort. I had given a lot of thought to the business of visiting such an oppressive regime, but as a firm believer in ‘When in Rome’ I knew what I was signing up for. I had come to observe and see for myself. But it was all right for me, I didn’t have to live here. Now here I was, confronted with the reality of life in the Islamic Republic. I looked around me at all the kind, spirited, open-hearted men and women I had met over the last few days and tried to connect them to this repressive religious diktat telling half of the population to hide their bodies and the other half that they are base, uncontrollable beings. And I couldn’t for the life of me make the connection. It was my first true understanding of the chasm between the Iranian people and their government.

  Bags were searched, passports were stamped and then – the moment I had been dreading – my bike was examined. The border guards and customs officers disappeared for hours with my documents. The anticipation was unbearable. I sat and stood and strode up and down the platform in the early morning sun, wondering if this was going to be the end of my journey. Finally, the men returned. My paperwork was stamped, sealed and delivered, and not one eyebrow raised about my plans to roam around their country on my motorcycle. The train set off for Tabriz, where I would disembark and my Iranian motorcycle adventure would begin for real. I settled back in my bunk, sinking into the most welcome sleep. It seemed my visa lady’s hunch had been correct; I had got away with it.

  But of course, it was never going to be that easy. Just as I was nodding off to the reassuring clickety-clack, there was a knock on the door of our cabin. Arshia and I hastily threw our headscarves over our hair as a young policeman in a faded but neatly pressed uniform stepped inside.

  ‘He says you must go to the restaurant car, with your passport,’ Arshia translated, her expression nervous. I had the distinct impression that this time there would be no tea towels or Tupperware involved.

  The Iranian rolling stock was antique compared to its Turkish equivalent, but you could tell that back in the day, the designers had splurged some big budget on the dining car. Unfortunately, decades of underfunded Trans-Asian service had taken its toll on the formerly plush decor, and its flouncy red satin curtains, ornate Persian carpet and pink velveteen upholstery were now threadbare and faded, affording it the shabby opulence of a backstreet opium den. Under normal circumstances I would have revelled in this fabulous milieu, but as I peeked through the beaded curtain in the doorway and caught sight of the group of policemen awaiting me, soft furnishings were the last thing on my mind.

  A silver tea urn hissed away on the counter, steaming up the windows and creating an oppressive, airless fug in the carriage. Four uniformed police officers sat around a table with a tray of tiny tea glasses, a bowl of sugar cubes and a pile of passports. They were busy sipping and stirring and stamping but they all stopped and looked up when I entered the carriage.

  ‘Sit down,’ said the one who was obviously in charge, motioning to a seat in front of him. He extended an open hand.

  ‘Your passport.’

  His stern manner was intimidating but I couldn’t help clock that he was quite dishy, in that despotic, Ahmadinejad way. Square jaw, thick dark hair, chiselled cheekbones; but when I met his gaze I felt a chill run through me. I’d never seen such mean eyes. This was bad boy appeal on a whole new level.

  He took a long time looking at my passport, flicking through the pages, examining the various visas and stamps from around the world with great interest, no doubt wondering what I was up to, hopping between London and the likes of Rio, New York and Marrakech. He turned to the photo page and looked back and forth at me and the picture repeatedly, then made a detailed examination of my Iranian visa. He said something in Persian to his colleagues before putting my passport in the top pocket of his shirt. I didn’t like this. Why wasn’t it going in the pile with the other ones to be stamped? Once again, I feared I was going to be rumbled for my illicit motorcycle.

  ‘You will be fingerprinted,’ he said. Then added, as a cursory attempt at politeness, ‘OK?’

  Like I had any choice in the matter.

  ‘Oh yes, fine!’ I attempted a breezy tone of voice, Like yeah, whatever, I’m always being fingerprinted by the Iranian police. ‘Can I go back to my cabin?’

  After the sleep deprivation of the all-night immigration and customs procedures, I was desperate to lie down, even if just for an hour.

  His eyes narrowed as he shook his head. ‘No. You will stay here.’

  This changed everything. He had my passport and I was forbidden from leaving his sight; he held all the cards. My lack of sleep combined with the general apprehension that comes with the first few hours in a strange country began to stir my imagination. After all, this is a nation where innocent tourists have been arrested for espionage. I recalled the recent reports that had made the news back home: a group of American hikers arrested for spying after accidentally straying across the border from neighbouring Iraq; the same for some Slovakian paragliders who had unknowingly flown over a sensitive military site; a British backpacker who had spent two months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for taking a photo. Why not me next? Could I be mistaken for a spy
? It had all seemed rather far-fetched back in England, but now here I was, under the watch of the Iranian police, who had confiscated my passport and were about to take my fingerprints.

  Suspicion of westerners was so ingrained in the Iranian authorities, having had it drummed into their collective psyche for the last thirty-five years, that I suppose I could hardly blame them. But how could I possibly expect common sense and logic to triumph over this level of fanatical dogma and paranoia? As I sat there in silence, I too became paranoid. Had someone tipped them off about my bike? Had the Turkish railway porters called ahead with the intel? I started concocting an escape plan. How would I get a message back home? A palpable, physical sense of panic coursed through me and I forced myself to breathe steadily.

  Sitting motionless in the chair, I watched the other passengers in the dining car with envy. Their journeys continued as usual, they were drinking tea, eating breakfast with their friends and family, going home to their normal lives. I was suddenly aware of being exposed and alone. However friendly my fellow passengers had been, I couldn’t expect them to stick their heads above the parapet on my behalf, not in a country where to be seen to be fraternising with a westerner could attract unwanted attention from the security services. No, I was definitely on my own here.

  Many of the passengers were a generation or two older than me, men and women who would remember the pre-revolution era; they had probably supported the overthrow of the Shah at the time. Considering that over ninety-eight per cent of the population had voted for the creation of an Islamic Republic back in 1979, it was highly likely that most of these quiet, tea-drinking folk around me had ticked the YES box in that fateful referendum. I wondered if they regretted that decision now. Much of the revulsion and anger the Iranian people had felt towards the Shah’s reign was fuelled by the brutal tactics of his secret police force, SAVAK – comparable to East Germany’s Stasi – who routinely tortured and executed his opponents. Political dissidents, trade unionists and communists were targeted and demonstrators protesting against the Shah’s lavish lifestyle were killed in the streets. But what had really changed with the revolution? Khomeini had whipped up a storm with all the rhetoric of a people’s revolution, but as soon as power was seized and the Islamic Republic created, he quickly set about creating his very own brutal security services – the all-powerful Revolutionary Guards, and beneath them, the shadowy Basij, who were regarded as thuggish mercenaries doing the bidding of the ayatollahs. For the people of Iran, a new era of fear and intimidation had replaced the previous one, just with new uniforms, no neckties and more facial hair.